


Don't You Forget About Me

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Banshees, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Mild Horror, Morrigan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 13:10:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11014104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: After Len, nothing seems to be going right for Mick. He keeps going listlessly -- at least until something cold as death starts crawling into his bed.(In which Mick Rory braves the Sidhe to win back his True Love)





	Don't You Forget About Me

**Author's Note:**

> For @jq-piccadilly's birthday!

After Len died, everything sort of stopped, for Mick.

Oh, he kept going, kept fighting, kept up with the great and noble mission to which he had been consigned by destiny and by Len. The flesh of him kept right on going.

It was the spirit of him that came to a halt.

He stopped caring about the things that made him happy, before; stopped caring about the game, or food, or even fun; stopped caring all too much about being alive. 

But he kept going and time, wicked time, starts healing even his most dire wounds.

Mick had a chair in his room - big, comfy, just the way he liked it. It was good that it was so comfy, because he slept there, now, forsaking the bed in his cabin. 

The bed that had been his and his Lenny's both.

Not even Kronos had dragged on his soul like Len's death - a hundred years and a day disappearing like a wink in the salt of Len's tears, but no salt would save him from this loss. Nothing but time could help.

He doesn't sleep in the bed.

He remembered with terrible clarity how it was, that bed, a touch too small for two grown men but comfortable regardless. Reminded them both of a prison bed, when they'd first seen it, and it had made them laugh.

They shared that bed, just like they'd shared all their beds. Mick always went to bed first, pointedly, because Len's brain whirled so fast and so hard it needed to see good behavior to model it, but he liked to stay awake, dozing, until Len crawled into bed with him, cold from the air outside the bed, and wrapped a chill arm around his chest.

Len liked to put his icy fingertips – terrible circulation, that man – under Mick’s shirt, to warm his hand on Mick’s heart. It was one of the things Mick loudly complained about but secretly enjoyed.

It’s one of those thing Len will do no more, because he’s dead.

Mick doesn't sleep in the bed.

Mick kept on with the Legends. They treated him badly, and he let them. He encouraged it, even, playing up his stupidity, his brutishness, his uselessness, wanting the emotional spikes of pain under his nails, under his skin. He would never harm himself physically - Len would turn over in his grave, if he had one - but he could torment himself in other ways.

He doesn't sleep in the bed.

Time passed, and passed, and passed, until he was lighting a year's time candle for Len and watching a false version of the man disappear like the illusion he was.

"Do you think he sleeps uneasy, what with no grave?" someone asked at one point.

It may have been Mick, come to think about it.

He doesn't sleep in the bed.

But in that year, time passed and time healed and even the worse wounds can become scars, and at any rate when Mick swore to Len's ghost that he'd care for the team that Len'd died for, he'd meant it, and he took such oaths seriously. Keeping the Legends intact was a trip and a half, and more work than he'd ever done before, and it just didn't stop.

The work he let himself be made to do, the abuse he'd once invited and now resented -

He was tired, damnit.

And one day, a day after he lit that blasted candle that he can still see gutted on the desk, a day he should’ve had for grieving but instead spent out fixing yet another stupid aberration, he's so tired he just staggers right into his room, eyes barely staying open, and he collapses in the bed where his feet and his friends - Ray, he thinks, though it could be Sara - help him, and he curls up in the bed, which is sweet and perfect.

If he'd fallen straight asleep and never repeated the act, well, he might've fared better.

He doesn't.

He has just enough time to realize he's in the bed, the bed and not the chair, and he yields to his exhaustion and doesn't rise up and leave.

Time heals all wounds, he thinks blearily, thinks sadly, thinks regretfully, and he closes his eyes and he sleeps.

He wakes up in the middle of the night to a footstep.

A single one, but even in his exhaustion, watchfulness is part of who he is, and so Mick is awake if still reluctant to move. 

It's probably one of the Legends, looking for something and not bothering to knock.

Another footstep.

The blanket lifts behind him.

Mick expects to be roused with a shove.

He isn't.

A cold body crawls in with him, cold as ice, cold as - _Len_ \- and Mick shivers. He doesn't turn. He doesn't want to. It would ruin the illusion. The dream. 

The nightmare. 

A chill arm wraps around his body, and the hand finds his heart.

Mick knows that hand, knows that arm, knows that chill, and he would weep for the fact that he's clearly gone and lost it at last, but he doesn't want to disturb the dream.

He closes his eyes and dreams -

He dreams of blue.

The next morning, he's more tired than the night before, but he's upright, he's mobile. The Legends will have to make do with that.

"Wow, Mick, you look like shit," Sara says, eloquent as always.

Mick grunts and grabs the coffee. He has it Irish, of course. He's _Irish_. 

"You do look positively haggard," Amaya says. 

Mick grunts again and ignores them both. 

He doesn't expect it to happen again. 

It does. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

Mick Rory's ma was Irish even in a town filled with Irishmen. She was a proper mac something-or-other, some other child told Mick solemnly once; she might even be descended from a queen. 

She certainly carried herself like one, marching through town with a straight spine and steel in her gaze, making pennies stretch for miles, raising her gaggle of children - six all together - with no family around to lend her aid, and not too shy to challenge even the big department stores when she felt she wasn't getting her money's worth. She was tough as dirt and just as practical. 

Except, of course, when it came to the faeries. 

The _aos sí_ , the _daoine sídhe_ , Tuatha de Danann, or whatever they were called. 

Ma Rory's boys went around with salt in their pockets and iron nails, too. No one else did, but Mick's ma insisted. 

And, to be fair, there were some moments where it seemed the rest of the town didn't disbelieve as big as all that. 

See, Mick's ma was the seventh daughter, with six older girls that had nearly bankrupted her poor father, and Mick her sixth son, sons all in a row. There was talk in town, anticipation, when she got pregnant again. 

"A seventh son of a seventh daughter; that's powerful magic," one of the children at school tells Mick. "A seer, a mage. A portent of great things." 

He looks at Mick, then, all beady-eyed. "Not that you really matter," Mick is told. "No one ever pays attention to the mage's _older brothers_. Except where they fail first, of course - but that's usually in threes." 

There are sighs of relief and disappointment when Mick's ma gives birth to a girl instead. 

When Mick turned ten, his ma ordered his brothers away, sends her husband out with his baby sis, and brought him into the house. 

"Michael," his ma says. 

Mick blinks, indignant. "I didn't do nothing!" 

For once, it's even true. 

His ma sighs. "It's not about what you've done," she says. "It's about what I've done." 

Mick frowns. That's not how the lectures usually go. 

"Before I married your da, I got myself in trouble," she says bluntly. 

Mick's eyebrows go up. He's always heard that nice girls ought to about that mysterious pre-marriage 'trouble' as much as they should. Of course, he never thought of his sharp-tongued, bull-headed ma as particularly nice... 

"It were a boy, too," she says. "Sickly, he was, but he survived, and the nuns at the convent took him away. But he was mine. My first boy. After that, my parents took me around and I met your da, and I came here." 

Mick nods. "So Jacky ain't the eldest." That'll show Jacky, who's always boasting about it and claiming it gave him special privileges. 

"Jack is my second," she confirms. "And you, my baby boy, are the seventh, not the sixth." 

Mick frowns. "But ain't a seventh son supposed to have the Sight?" 

His ma chokes back an unhappy laugh. "My baby boy," she says, and it annoys Mick that that's the nickname she picked for him for all that it's technically true. "I wouldn't have told you about this, 'cept for the fact you need to know it. Weren't you telling me just last week about how you stopped your big brother from going to rescue the horse from that flooded river, all 'cause you saw it had gills?" 

"I thought it were like in the comic books," Mick says. "Radioactive." 

His mother shakes his head. "We call 'em kelpie. Horse-spirits that drag boys to their deaths. You saved your brother that day." 

"I got sent to bed without dessert!" 

"You did punch him in the face. And a year ago, do you remember the day you went up to the governor's house with your school? And you got lost and went to the kitchens and spent a few hours with the cook and the cobbler and the handyman, all of 'em complaining about how their wages been cut? And the governor got all pale when you mentioned it?" 

Mick nods. 

"They cater at the governor's house," she says gently. "They don't have a cook." 

"But -" 

"T’were the brownies, my boy." 

"Is that why they liked my chocolate?" Mick had felt bad for them, their wages all cut, and he'd given them the chocolate bar in his pocket, all cut up in equal size portions, just enough for all of them if he didn't take one for himself. He'd regretted it - a chocolate bar of his own was a rare indulgence which he'd saved up two months' allowance for - but they'd been so happy he couldn't bear to keep it for himself. 

"I think they liked the milk in the milk chocolate," his ma says. "But that's why I'm telling you now, you've got to be careful. You've got the Sight, just like everyone said, and people with the Sight get themselves in trouble." 

"I get in trouble all the time." 

"You just keep telling me if there's anything weird," she instructs. "Right off." 

Mick sighs, but he's a good boy, and he obeys. 

Well, he tries. 

"We should take him to see a shrink," his da says, watching him guiltily clean up after another fire. 

"Won't help," his ma says. "The fire comes from inside of him." 

When Mick is ten, he starts getting into fights. He has broad shoulders that he'd grow into one day, but right now he's still skinny as a rake and his fists aren't strong enough to defend his temper. 

The boys at school jump him after school, strip him bare, and pitch him into the local pond, hollering insults the whole time. Mick hollers them right back, but what's he to do? They ran off with his clothing, and he's got to get home before dark. 

Mick grits his teeth against the slight. It won’t be too bad, getting home; it's getting cold as the summer draws to a close, but it’s not so cold as to hurt. He's embarrassed, sure, but embarrassment won't hurt him. Not on the outside, anyway, only in the soft gentle parts inside of him, and men weren’t supposed to have those anyway. 

He's walking home, head held high because why not, when he sees the cat. 

Big and black and beautiful, she is, with eyes as wild as stars, and she's got six little babies curled right up at her side, nursing, and a mate at her back, smaller, licking at her shoulder in homage. 

She's near as big as a dog, she is, with a white stripe dead center on her chest. 

One little runt is sitting not far from the others. It ain’t nursing or anything, but it looks fine. 

Mick smiles a little at the cats. He likes cats. 

Somehow, they notice him looking and all of a sudden the big cat starts to wail, and the little cats all wail, too, and the mate, too, all of them, all but the little runt who starts to cry, softly, instead. 

Mick feels cold, all of a sudden, scared. "You stop that, right now, you hear me?" he snaps at them, and suddenly three more kittens run from the mama, what keeps a-wailing. The little kittens scatter off, sticking together, but they don’t go anywhere near the runt. 

The fear is still there. He runs the rest of the way home, pride be damned. 

"Mickey, my darling, what's happened? Where are your clothes, and why are you so scared?" his ma asks. 

He tells her everything, and his ma goes pale as a ghost. 

 

"What was it, ma?" he asks. 

"The Cat," she says. "Oh, that ain't no good, no good at all." 

She gnawed at her lip. "Only one runt, all alone," she says. "Crying where the others are wailing." 

"Until I said something," Mick corrects her. "Then there were four." 

"And I'm glad you said something. The Cat Sidhe is a collector of souls. Did the kittens run together?" 

"No, the runt was still alone." 

"And so alone you will be, my baby boy, but you have saved all their lives." 

His ma sends away his baby sister to her parents, his brothers whoever she could. The oldest ones laugh at her fears and refuse to leave so close to the harvest, but the youngest she can insist upon better. In the end, she sends away two boys and the girl. 

That's why they don't die in the fire. 

Mick hates his Sight for not letting him save more. 

He ain't all too fond of cats after that, neither. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------- 

Mick always did wonder why he'd started seeing Len those days before the false version came to him. It wasn't grief, like Stein claimed; he'd never seen visions in his grief before. It wasn't what was in his head, courtesy of the thrice-damned time-stealers, the fickle monarchs in their palace three steps removed from the regular flow of time. 

In Ireland they spoke of people who'd gone sideways into the hills, and how they never returned the same. 

Mick's not impressed. He went sideways, as sideways as you get, and they tried their absolute hardest to make him forget who he was so that he'd stay with them forever - but he rejected them. 

Oh, Mick swore himself to them, he played the role of the Knight, but when a hundred years and one had passed, his Tam-Lin Len had grasped his soul tight, grasped him hard through rage and pain and hate, had offered up his life and so won Mick's freedom. 

And the time-stealers had no hold on Mick anymore. 

He's not the same, no, but he's not as different as all that. 

He's still himself. 

"The story's supposed to end with a wedding," he tells himself, a year of death come and gone. The ring of platinum - spell-cursed silver that it was - was warm beneath his clothing. "The story's supposed to end with a wedding after the rescue. Not a funeral. Even I know that much." 

No one responds, of course. 

But every goddamn night Mick goes to sleep in that bed, and every goddamn night something crawls in beside him and curls that cold chill arm around him. 

"You look sick," Jax says. "Have you gotten checked out by Gideon?" 

Mick rolls his eyes, but Jax is not so easily deterred. 

In the end, Mick admits that he has - sure, it was only because Sara insisted at knife-point, certain that that zombie disease was coming back or something, but it isn't his fault his eyes have bags under them large enough to steal something in, or that his skin's gone grey with exhaustion. 

He sleeps every night in his bed. 

Every night. 

"You should go again," Jax says. 

Mick goes again. 

Gideon returns a clean bill of health - but for the exhaustion, which she cannot explain, and the fact that everyone around him can see that Mick's dying. 

They make him sleep in the med bay that night. 

Mick doesn't want to. He can't sleep anymore, not without that arm curled around him - him, who used to sleep anywhere and anytime! He can't even nap anymore. 

Not without Lenny. 

Oh, it's not Len, Mick knows it can't be Len. He held the hope of Len's resurrection in his hands and he let it go, and he put that illusion back on the road to perdition where it belonged, because he couldn’t let a Len live that lived under that type of brainwashing. 

He didn't tell any of them that he knew that the mind-wipe would fix the brainwashing, where nothing else would. He didn't see why it mattered. 

He didn't want to sleep anywhere but the bed. 

Their bed. 

The Legends made him. "Your skin is grey," they said, "your eyes are red, you look as though you're a corpse risen up." 

"If only, if only," Mick says. 

They looked uncomfortable. "Corpses can't rise up," Stein tells him, using different words, fancy words, but the meaning is clear enough. "You know that best of all." 

It's a lie, of course. Many a corpse has stood once more - monsters, the lot of them, but standing tall and proud. Mick’s ma told him all about those, and she told them their names: the red cap, the washer-woman, the screaming in the dark. 

The Legends make Mick sleep in the med bay. 

But joy of joys, that night he feels the chill hands on his shoulders, spreading down the blanket, crawling in, wrapping the arm around him. 

Putting a hand on his heart. 

Mick smiles and sleeps. 

The next morning he looks even more wretched than usual. 

Gideon has nothing. 

No explanation, no cure, nothing. 

Mick wouldn't take it if they did. 

The Legends give up and let him go back to his room. 

Mick sleeps in his own bed. 

And smiles at the cold. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

"Mick." 

Mick grumbles. He's tired, damnit. Let a man sleep. 

Sure, it's all he does these days, but really, people should accept that. 

" _Mick_." 

Mick has thirty years of training to drop everything and respond to that insistent nasal whine. 

He sighs and opens his eyes. 

Len is perched on his goddamn chest, straddling him, peering down at him. 

"Y'weigh a fucking ton," Mick tells him, slurring with sleep. "Gerroff." 

"Can't," Len says, not without regret. "You're almost dead, you know." 

Mick murmurs agreement. He'd accepted that already, hadn't he? Why is Len kicking up a fuss about it _now_? 

Wait, since when have his hallucinations started to talk again? 

"I'm not a hallucination," Len grumbles. "I wasn't then, either; I stole a mirror to talk to you, all those times." 

Seems like a Len thing to do. 

Len prods at him. " _Mick_." 

That one means 'Pay attention to me'. Mick is very familiar with that variant of his name. 

He forces himself more and more awake, or as much as he can, nowadays. "What issit?" 

"You're almost dead," Len repeats, as if that's important. "I want you to _stop_." 

"Stop what?" 

"Stop being almost dead, of course," Len says snippily. 

"Can't," Mick says, because it's true. The Legends have tried - fancy future doctors, changing locations, even took him to see John Constantine, who had taken Mick aside in private and told him "if you want to die, it's easier to blow out your brains, you know", which hadn't been all that helpful and so Mick had declined his offer of an exorcism. 

"Exorcism wouldn't have helped anyway," Len says. "I'm not a ghost." 

Mick's not too tired to pull up his cheeks in a bit of a smirk. "Not a hallucination or a ghost. What are you, then?" 

Len blinks down at him, inhumanly blue eyes luminous. "I'm a hag." 

A what? 

Mick wakes the rest of the way up, all at once, and he stares up at Len. Len, who doesn't look like any of his neat hallucinations, like his brainwashed former self, nothing. 

Len, with glowing blue eyes with pupils shaped like stars, with teeth that are long and filed to a sharp point, whose skin is grey like a corpse but for the black shine of his long and deadly claws, his beautiful fingers curving into terrible talons, his clothing dirty rags that fall off his frame. 

Dirty, but familiar. He'd been wearing that outfit when he'd gone to the Oculus, over a year and a day before. 

It had been exactly a year and a day, in fact, when the dreams had begun. 

" _Bean sidhe_ ," Mick gasps. 

"That's a woman," Len sniffs. "I'm still male. Well, non-binary with a preference for masculine pronouns, whatever. Not like the Underhill cares." 

"You've been?" 

"The Time Masters were something of a renegade bunch," Len says, baring his sharpened teeth. "Changelings all, you know; they trapped a Queen in a labyrinth so she could fashion them more of the same. We met her, remember? In that orphanage, where we put our past selves within her grasp." 

Stolen children from all the ages - of course. 

Of course the bastards were changelings. Human-born but raised beneath the Hill, who aped mastery of magics they could never hope to truly control. Jealous, bitter creatures; they helped steal more of their kind to spread the misery further, hoping it would be lessened and failing to understand why it didn't help. All they ever wanted was for someone ranked lower than themselves to step on. 

Somehow Mick's unsurprised that they ended up forming a bureaucracy. 

"And you?" 

"They went too far," Len says. "A Queen more or less - well. There are Queens in every nook and cranny, you know; male and female, strong and weak. You get enough followers willing to call you a Queen and a bit of land, that's good enough. But they weren't satisfied with that. They wanted the power to raid and rule the Hill itself." 

Mick knows enough of his folklore. "They wanted the power of the High King." 

Len grins. "They wanted his throne. I don't think they entirely understand the concept of an elected monarchy, but in fairness, Oberon ruled a thousand years in his time. They might've gotten confused." 

"What happened?" 

"I unbound the wellspring they'd created. A cat jumped across my corpse and snatched my soul - same cat as what tried to warn you before, as it happens - and the King built me a new body of straw and silver. It's silver what runs through my veins now, Mick, not iron. That dream that the changelings all wanted, and he gave it to me - to spite them, I think." 

Mick swallows. "And you're - what are you?" 

"I'm a hag," Len says. "The mara, the banshee, the night-mare - whatever you want to call me." 

A night-hag, bearer of nightmares, who rides you in your sleep and drains your soul - and indeed, Len is perched upon his chest, a crushing, draining weight, and Mick may have been talking but his arms lie paralyzed by his sides. 

"I haven't had nightmares," Mick says, his only protest. 

Len looks at him like he's lost his mind. "Of course not," he says. "You're my _partner_. I took the nightmares, and gave you dreams of peace." 

That was always the way of Len: throwing himself in front of the bullet he himself fired at you. 

As fickle as Fae, Mick had thought before, amused. 

Not so amusing now. 

"Why can I see you now?" Mick asks. "When I couldn't before?" 

"I have the strength, now," Len says. "I've drained you near to death." 

Mick nods. That makes sense. 

"If you weren't who you were," Len continues, "it might still have not been enough. You shut your eyes to the Sight long ago - but the Sight doesn't forget you." 

"What's the purpose of this visit?" Mick asks, because Sight or no Sight, he knows his partner. 

Len's waiting for him to ask. 

Len gives a sigh of contentment, tension relaxing; he must have needed Mick to ask the question. Probably one of the strange laws of the _Sidhe_ that Mick doesn’t know about. 

"I'm a hag and shall remain so till the tides come no more," Len says, wrinkling his nose at his own poeticism - undoubtedly words of ritual, based on his expression. "But a hag is not a lord, and may be bound into service - and taken from the Hill." 

"Taken," Mick says, his heart leaping in his mouth. 

"You're no singer, and your violin playing would scare away dead souls," Len says dryly. "But you're the seventh son of a seventh daughter, and though it has been hidden from sight and memory, there have been six such generations born before you. If you die now, there will never be a seventh, and magic throughout the land will be the weaker." 

Mick frowns. "I don't have -" 

Len makes a face that says he's trying not to laugh. "Did you really never think about the consequences of sperm donation, with _your_ family line?" 

Oops. 

"Six daughters you have sired - their families are very grateful, just so you know, the kids are great, all very happy, and those with mental illness are getting it seen to properly - but you will never sire a seventh if you die now." 

Mick raises his eyebrows. "You asking if I'll trade my kid for you?" 

"Like I would ever agree to suggest that," Len replies, rolling his eyes. "No - we give you a chance to win me back, if you promise that, if you are successful, you'll go about having that seventh kid. What you do with her beyond that is all on you. Free will, you know, that sort of thing. Magic loves it." 

"And I'll have you." 

Len smiles, and his teeth are sharp and pointed and shine in the light. "If you still want me." 

Like that's a choice Mick has to think hard about. 

But Mick's ma was Irish, in a land filled with Irishmen, and she didn't raise a fool. 

"I think," Mick says, "that I'd like a written contract, if you will. And I'd like my lawyer to look at it first." 

Len throws back his head and laughs. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Mick knows the stories, well and good. He’s no singer to charm the Lords of the Sidhe to give back what he’d lost, and – as Len so succinctly put it – his violin skills would scare off spirits of the dead, and not in a good way. But he’s the seventh son of a seventh daughter, and his mother a seventh daughter of a seventh son, and so on and so forth, hidden from Sight by magic and from memory by lies, and his child will be a marvel should she ever be born. 

Marvels can also be terrors, of course. 

No wonder John Constantine offered him the path of the bullet. 

Mick sleeps three days and three nights in his bed, overriding Gideon to lock his door, and each night at the stroke of midnight, Len comes to him. The second night, Len brings a negotiator, a woman so pretty that it hurts Mick’s eyes even to look at her; but Mick’s heart belongs firmly in Len’s pocket and he declines her overtures in favor of negotiating long and hard into the night. When they finally reach an accord, she offers him a hand to shake, grudgingly impressed, and Mick refuses: Len came once to make the offer, twice for the negotiations, and so the bargain would be sealed on the third night, not the second. 

She's even more impressed with that. 

That night Mick writes down all he can remember of their agreements and made Gideon send it to Lisa with strict orders to get it back to him before nightfall. It’s all he can manage before his bed drags him back into the arms of sleep. 

He wakes up, once, to Gideon telling him that he has a reply. Lisa took his contract to all the lawyers they knew, and the sharpest minds out of the lot pointed out a few clauses that Mick might want to be wary of – after all, the Underhill does so love its tricks, and giving a man his every wish while denying him his hearts’ desire is their favorite. 

Mick considers the matter, and slips back into sleep. 

Midnight comes again, and with it Len and his negotiator, who today was a hideous crone wearing a cloak of crows’ feathers and yet was the same as yesterday – Mick suspects that if she had come with Len the first night, she would have been a child – and Mick lays out his requirements. 

“A _what_?” the negotiator says blankly. 

Len howls with laughter. 

“A best efforts clause,” Mick repeats. “Means you gotta try your hardest to make it live up to the spirit instead of the letter.” 

“We don’t agree to those!” 

Mick shrugs. “I was willing to let the hag –” He doesn’t use Len’s name; he’s not so stupid. “– sit on me for months and months before agreeing to hear you out. You want this, bad as I do; I figure we ought to meet all equitable.” 

Her eyes glow like the moon. “And if we refuse, and claim you for our own without relief for your insolence?” 

Mick smiles. It’s not a nice smile. “I’ve spent a hundred years and one beneath the Hill,” he says. “Kronos, they called me, 'cause they could not break my true name; a hundred years and one as a Knight before my true love held me fast and pulled me out. You cannot claim me – you’ve already tried that, and failed. You want my magic to reach its fulfillment?” He points at the contract. “Then sign.” 

“Or else?” 

“Or else I go tell all the bards I know that the Lords of the Sidhe no longer keep true to their deals - and are cowards, too.” 

The negotiator laughs, a wretched thing, long and lolling and gruesome, but she plucks a crow’s feather from her cloak and she signs the contract with her own blood. Then – much to his surprise – she offers him the same feather. 

“Didn’t know we were on such close terms,” he says, accepting it. You don’t turn down a gift kindly-meant from the _aos sí_. 

“Any man, seventh son or no, would can out-stubborn the Morrigan deserves blood-brothership,” she replies gleefully, and really, if Mick had realized he was negotiating with the goddamn _goddess of war_ maybe he wouldn’t have been quite so rude, but he’s not going to say no. 

He cuts his hand – a prick at the base of the thumb, which has no impact on mobility, rather than on his fingers, which he actually _uses_ – and signs his own name besides hers. 

“Well done,” the Morrigan says. “I wish you the best of luck in the battles ahead.” 

Mick inclines his head in thanks. 

And so they go – 

\- and so he awakens. 

He gets up, dresses, and walks to the bridge. 

The Legends all gawk at him: standing tall, hearty and hale and flushed red with the blood of a goddess. 

“I need to borrow the ship,” Mick tells them. It’s not a request. “Strap in.” 

\----------------------------------------------------------------- 

Mick goes first to visit John Constantine. 

“You freed yourself from a haunting,” Constantine observes. “That’s rare.” 

“I need a map to the Underhill,” Mick replies. 

“Oh _hell_ no.” 

Mick shrugs. “I’ve got seven days and one to make it to the meeting place. Want to see my contract?” 

“You _contracted_ with the buggers? You’re right fucked, you are,” Constantine says, but he takes the contract. 

After he reads it, he squints at Mick. “You’re a seventh of a seventh and you never thought to mention it?” 

“A what?” Jax asks. 

“Seventh of a seventh of a seventh,” Mick confirms, ignoring him. “Six times over.” 

“And I suppose you’ve got seven of your own?” 

Mick smirks. “Six, apparently.” 

Constantine groans. “Now I see what you have to trade that they’d want.” 

“Is someone going to explain this to the rest of us?” Sara asks. 

“You sure that’s a good idea?” John asks, following Mick’s lead and ignoring her. “Even though you get to keep the kid, the Gentlemen are going to have a vested interest.” 

Mick shrugs. “I’m on my way to rescue my True Love who has been transformed into a _night hag_.” 

“…I take your point.” 

“Wait,” Ray says. “Mick’s fallen in love? When?” 

Mick isn’t even going to engage with that. 

Constantine gets him the map. 

“Really?” Mick says dubiously. “A strip mall?” 

“Don’t doubt the value of liminal spaces,” Constantine says. “Also, have you _seen_ those places at night? Even _I_ think they’re creepy.” 

Mick shrugs. “I’d say thank you,” he says, “but I don’t do that.” 

“Because you have no manners?” Stein suggested. 

“Wise man,” Constantine says. “You keep up with that, especially if you're playing games with the Fair Folk. And if I ever need something that requires a drop of blood from a seventh of a seventh, I’ll call you. You have no idea how many useful things call for that.” 

“I have some,” Mick – who had totally been kidnapped a few times by foster parents with an eye towards genealogical records, albeit ones who hadn’t read the fine print of ‘disturbed juvenile arsonist’ and had no idea what they were getting into – replies. “Guess I’ll be on my way.” 

“You’re going nowhere without my agreement,” Sara puts in. “How’d you even get Gideon to bring us here, anyway?” 

“He’s a _seventh_ ,” Constantine says, stressing the syllables. “And you’re in a _time ship_.” 

The Legends all blink at him. 

“Think adoring puppy dog and someone who smells of bacon.” 

_Any technology sufficiently advanced will be mistaken for magic_ , Mick thinks, amused; looks like the other way is true as well. 

Time ships always did answer to him particularly easy when he was Kronos, a matter of some great frustration to some of the other bounty hunters... 

Map in hand, ignoring the Legends' protests, Mick goes on the next leg of his trip. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

This place had no name, no place, no time - by those that knew it, it was the Floating Market, but ask any of them what that was and they'd deny they'd ever heard of such a thing. 

Indeed, many said it was impossible to describe, even if you were willing to spill its secrets. 

Mick thought of it as a time traveler's Mos Eisley. 

The greatest collection of thieves and vagabonds in the timeline. 

Today, it was in Rome. 

Mick doesn't actually pay much attention to where and when - no togas and no t-shirts, so somewhere in the 1000s - because it didn't matter, not really. You don't find the Market by _looking_ for it, you find it with a dowsing rod reserved especially for the purpose. 

Mick's never needed one. 

"The Floating Market is one of the places that even Captain Hunter feared to go," Gideon tells him. 

"Probably because Time Masters aren't treated like gods there," Mick says. 

More like pests to be stomped out, actually; their arrogant and high-handed ways had no place in the Market. The Time Masters' bounty hunters, on the other hand, were welcomed as fellow-travelers. 

Mick likes the Market. 

"I wouldn't go, if I were you," he tells Sara. "They'll peg you for the League in a minute and black-ball you." 

She frowns. "They know the League?" 

"The League picked a fight with the Market once. I'm pretty sure the League calls that period of time the Great Disaster." 

Sara's frown deepens. She recognizes the name. "Why are you going there now?" 

"I need to see a man about a cat," Mick replies. 

His favorite of the Market's watering holes, of which there were an infinity, is still there. Mick's sure that for some of his fellow travelers, he only stepped out for a minute; such is the way of things. 

Underhill's not the only place that knows how to play with time. 

He heads in with Jax at one side and Sara - who never listens - on the other. The others were guarding the ship: they'd already gotten six offers to purchase it, and two attempts to steal it. 

"Good to see ya, Kronos," one of his old drinking buddies calls out. He's big and tall, wearing black leather pants and a matching vest. His shaggy black hair is as wild as his smile. "The Main Man missed having a challenge." 

Mick can't help a smile. 

"Lobo," he says. "Just who I wanted to see." 

"How can I help ya?" 

"I'm looking for Cat Anna," Mick tells him. "I need to know how to care for a hag, once you've got one to care for." 

Lobo belches from his beer and roars in laughter. "Cat Anna! Care for a hag! You'd better not be getting romantic on me, Kronos - and even if you were, Jenny Greenteeth or Canrig Bwt is far more, heh, feisty." 

"Canrig Bwt eats brains, Lobo," Mick reminds him. 

"So? Who needs 'em?" 

Mick grins. He likes Lobo. "You got me a lead on Cat Anna?" 

"Oh, sure. And you're in luck, too - she's just about to make the switch to Black Annis. Look for her by the witches' feet." 

Mick nods acknowledgment. "Good hunting, Lobo." 

"And you!" 

Mick drags a gaping Jax and Sara out of there. He's not sure what the big deal is. 

Kali _always_ has that many skulls tied onto her belt. 

The witches' feet is another part of the Market, best identified by the bunches of chicken's feet at every stall, done the same way hookers hang red lanterns. 

Finding Cat Anna is easy enough. Not many black cats are being given the royal treatment. 

"I wanna talk to you," Mick says to her, ignoring the way Sara seems to be doubting his sanity and how Jax appears be considering purchasing some newts' eyes for some godforsaken reason. 

Cat Anna stretches, long and lithe, and in a blink of an eye she becomes Black Annis, the one-eyed, long-haired, sharp-toothed hag of the hills. 

"You've been ridden hard," she rasps. "But gentle. That's not like a hag." 

"I'm seeking my true love," Mick tells her. 

She snorts. "You and the rest of humanity." 

"He's the hag." 

"Now _that's_ interesting! Human-born, I take it?” 

Mick inclines his head. 

“Well done, well done. And what need you with Black Annis, then?" she bares her teeth. "Lest you've got some children you don't need." 

"He ain't for sale," Mick says, swatting her reaching hand from Jax. "I need to know how to care for one. What'll you charge me? And you can get your own kids." 

She snorts. "Oh, hell, I ain't gonna charge you, not for bringing another hag into the world - assuming you manage it. Tell you what, m'boy - you wrestle your hag out of the _sidhe_ and you'll have all you need to know, and all I'll ask is to spread his name." 

She looks at him expectantly. 

"Captain Cold, they call him," Mick tells her. 

She cackles. "Oh, that's a fine one! We ain't never had a Captain before." 

She shoves her wrinkly hand at him and Mick kissed it in thanks. He feels the knowledge settle into his mind where it ought to be, locked away until he's fulfilled the conditions on his side. 

Getting the Legends out of the Market before they spend every penny they have and some they don't is yet another battle. 

And with that done, their eyes still dazed, he goes to claim himself a hag. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

The stories don't differ. 

Oh, some are charmers, some are singers, some are poets, but in the end the job's the same. 

You want to take something out of the _sidhe_ , you'd better grab it tight and hold it to your heart, no matter how it burns you. 

Lucky for Mick, he has plenty of experience with things that burn. 

The Legends follow in his wake, silent and unjudging, less as support than as witnesses. 

He’s warned them not to eat or drink and not to say their names to anyone, but to accept any gift they are given. He hopes that they’re wise enough to listen, but his focus has to be on his challenge. 

The strip mall at night becomes a Queen's Court - one more in the style of Mab than Titania, if Mick had to guess. The _bean sidhe_ coo when they see Mick and a familiar cat the size of a dog - all black but for the stripe of white at her heart - brushes by his feet, all approving. 

Len's his prize and his challenge both, and he stands at the center of the room. 

"Welcome, Kronos," the Queen says. "Seventh son of a seventh daughter, Hunter of the Timeline and Rover of the Waves, Knight of the Summer’s Shadow, Victor of the Battle of Bet-Adon, Trieste, and Atlantis-Ouest, Master of The Leviathan, Destroyer of the Renegade Court –” By which Mick assumes they mean the Time Masters. Nice to know that that’s been added to his list of titles. “– and guest at our court.” 

“Don’t forget Heatwave,” Mick reminds her. 

The Queen inclines her head gravely. The Lords love etiquette more than anything else; the best way to get the upper hand is to point out a flaw in their approach. This must be a young Queen indeed. 

“Heatwave, Supervillain, Member of the Rogues, Enemy of the Flash, Commander of Absolute Heat,” she recited. “I did not forget; I was unsure if you had reclaimed those titles.” 

“I have,” Mick replies, just as solemnly. 

Though not without worry. The stupid “Rogues” idea Len had _actually comes to fruition_? 

Ugh. 

Mick would say he’s having second thoughts about winning this contest, but he can’t even joke about that; the wound is still too fresh. 

Len grins as though he knows what Mick’s thinking, because he’s a dick. He’s totally going to take advantage of this to make Mick join his stupid Rogues. 

But on the other hand: he’ll be around to do that. 

Mick will take it. 

“You will face three trials,” the Queen says. “To rescue a soul from the _Sidhe_ requires love and hope and faith. We will try all three.” 

Mick nods, unsurprised. 

She waves her hand, and suddenly there’s a dozen Lens standing there, all the same. 

“Tell us which of these is your true love,” she demands. “For love will know love, even in disguise.” 

Mick gnaws on his lower lip, staring at them. “Might I test them, your Majesty?” 

“You may,” she replies haughtily. “Ask your questions.” 

Questions? Mick doesn’t need _questions_. Besides, changelings-constructs have the same memories as the original. Questions won’t help, as the Queen well knows. 

No, love needs a different test. 

Mick pulls out a hammer. 

The collected Court withdraws from the stench of iron, which causes them pain even at a distance. 

Mick steps forward, puts his hand on a nearby surface – a squat barrel which he suspects spends its daylight hours as a garbage can – and spreads his fingers wide. He lifts the hammer up high. 

“What are you doing?” the Queen asks. 

“My love gave up his hand for me,” Mick says. “Seems fair.” 

He brings the hammer down, as hard as he can. 

The iron never touches his flesh, caught instead by one of the Lens darting forward, his face flushed with rage. He ignores how his own hands sizzle at the touch of iron, too focused on Mick, too focused on yelling, “What the fuck are you doing?! You don’t need to _smash your own hand_ , you - you - you _asshole_! We already had it out about the hand! What the _fuck_?!” 

“This one,” Mick says to the Queen dryly. 

“Well played,” she responds, equally dry. A wave of the hand vanishes the remainder. 

Mick pries the hammer out of Len’s hands before they burn any more. “I’m not going to smash my hand,” he assures his partner. 

“You’d _better_ not!” 

“The next of your tests is this,” the Queen says, and she waves her hand. A table appears, with a wooden cup filled to the brim. 

Len’s eyes go wide. “What? No!” 

“Drink of the forgetting water,” the Queen says. “It washes away all care, and with all care all memory.” 

Mick raises his eyebrows skeptically. “So I’m supposed to drink away all my memories?” 

“All your cares,” she corrects. “If your love is true, then have no fear: you will remember him. But if not, you will leave without him and without the memory of him; and ne’er will you meet again.” 

“Damnit, he’s already been brainwashed enough!” Len snaps. “And he hates it, too; that’s a terrible test.” 

The Queen frowns thoughtfully. “If he will not trust to his own love, he cannot pass the test. And yet I have some sympathy to your plight: it is indeed an old wound. Very well: swear to me your services for three tasks of my will, and he may forgo the drink.” 

Mick reaches out and takes the cup. 

“Mick!” 

“The test is for both of us,” Mick tells him. “And you know it.” 

Len falters, just long enough for his brain to start to work – logic overcoming concern, his cold heart overcoming the heat of his emotions. 

“I see,” he says. “She can’t bind a hag to her will without their oath, and I ain’t giving her no oath – not for anything but this.” 

“She’d trade it and then laugh at us for failing her test,” Mick agrees. “You’ve got to trust me that I can do this, and I’ve got to trust in myself. That’s what hope is.” 

“Then go ahead,” Len says. He looks like he’s regretting it. 

Before Len can say another word more, Mick lifts the cup to his lips and drains it. 

It is – 

A blaze of flame surrounds him but does not burn him, soothing his innermost pain, the oldest of all his friends. It welcomes him, calls him to rest, a peaceful slumber. 

It wipes away all cares: the old hurt of his parents’ loss, the newer stings of the Legends’ cruelties, even his disagreements with Len over all those years. 

But Len is more than just a care, more than just a worry, more than just a disagreement. 

He's everything. 

Mick opens his eyes. “You ought to market that as an antidepressant,” he observes. “What’s the third test?” 

Len punches him in the shoulder, smiling. “They’re still looking to get FDA approval,” he jokes. 

“Well done,” the Queen says, ignoring their levity. “Your hope and love is true. And now there is only the test of faith.” 

She says no more. 

That’s fine. 

Mick knows what to do. 

He reaches for Len and he takes him into his arms and he holds on. 

Holds on through leopards and foxes and spitting cats, through flames and blistering cold, through hurricanes, holds on as his hands hurt and his gut feels like it’s been ripped out, holds on, holds on, holds on – 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

“Is anyone going to explain what just happened?” Sara asks, a little plaintively. 

They’re back on the Waverider. 

Len is by Mick's side, where he belongs. 

He has on that wretched blue parka that Mick would've sworn was lost on some time-traveling jaunt - and indeed that might be so, because this parka gleams subtly in Mick's sight like maybe it wasn't made of fabric from this plane. Also like maybe it could hold off a bomb. 

Mick reluctantly approves. He’s in favor of Len being bomb-resistant. 

Len also has a bag that seems to contain more things than it really ought. He says he won it off - someone. 

He refuses to give more details than that. 

His smile is still too sharp, his pupils still star-shaped, but his eyes have returned to their original shade and his talons have reshaped into familiar fingers and at any rate judging from the way none of the other Legends have commented, Mick is pretty sure that he's the only one who can see Captain Cold in his full, newly-inhuman glory. 

Mick is - 

Mick is content. 

No. 

Mick is happy. 

He's also getting a shit ton of information on the care and feeding of night hags - 'mara' is apparently the preferred name for the singular, Len was just being a dick - so he's not really in the mood to answer the question. 

"I'm back," Len says in belated response, when it becomes obvious that Mick has no intention of answering. "Obviously." 

"And it's the you we knew?" Jax asks cautiously. 

"Mr. Blow-Yourself-Up, in the flesh," Len confirms. 

"Oh," Jax says. "Uh. Good to see you again?" 

As if that's the switch, the rest of the Legends start crowding around with greetings and smiles and introductions to Nate and Amaya, stories and comradery and all that. Several of them step around Mick to do so. 

"I'm a little tired," Len says pleasantly. "As I'm sure Mick is. Perhaps later?" 

Human or not, Len's charisma is a force of nature. 

They are left alone. 

"You're back," Mick says, finally letting himself believe - really believe - that it's true. 

Len smiles, his secret, honest, hidden smile, that only Mick and Lisa get to see. "You saved me." 

Mick snorts. "You saved yourself, with my assistance." 

"Maybe," Len concedes. 

"You have plans already, I take it?" Mick asks. He knows that look in Len's eyes. 

It's so familiar, so wonderfully familiar, that his chest hurts. 

"Oh, yes," Len says. "Many - the Rogues, of course, and finding you just the right woman to bear our child -" 

Because of course it's _their_ child. 

Mick objects not at all. 

"- and maybe having a bit of a snack off our dear friends the Legends, who seem to have grown disrespectful of you in my absence," Len continues. "But that's for later. For now I have other plans." 

"I'm all yours," Mick says. 

Dangerous words, to say to one reborn among the _Sidhe_. 

Mick finds he can mean it no less. Everything he is, the flaws, the virtues, all the powers he was born to, the full sum of him - it's all nothing without Len. 

Len's eyes glitter with pleasure and he takes Mick's hand, and he leads him to the bed. 

The bed where they slept together when Len was still a man, the bed that Mick avoided so much that year they were apart, the bed where Mick gave himself, body and soul, to the hungry nightmare Len has become. 

Mick smiles and climbs into the bed. 

Behind him, a cold body climbs in. 

A chill arm wraps around his body. 

A hand rests upon Mick's heart. 

"Sleep," Len whispers in Mick's ear. "I'll watch over your dreams." 

Mick closes his eyes. 

And sleeps.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Don't You Forget About Me [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12388719) by [litrapod (litra)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litrapod)




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